Probably the last thing Angela Merkel needs right now is a political scandal back home, but it’s dropped out of the blue and it’s in her own cabinet.

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a political celebrity regarded as having a chance to lead Germany one day, is alleged by two newspapers to have lifted complete paragraphs from newspaper articles and other sources and included them in his 2006 doctoral thesis on U.S. and European constitutional issues.

Another newspaper article charged that Guttenberg failed to attribute material taken from an academic. But the author in question dismissed the incident as minor.

The minister has denied the allegations.

Germany’s respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which published the original accusations, as well as other German newspapers are liberally publishing on their website pages of his thesis – including Mr. Guttenberg’s first two introductory paragraphs – alongside the original articles showing allegedly lifted passages in yellow highlighter.

Mr. Guttenberg on Wednesday insisted that the thesis was his work alone, but that he would consider revisiting the footnoting for a second edition. He withheld further comment, and late Wednesday left Germany to visit German troops in Afghanistan.

“The accusation that my doctoral thesis was plagiarism is absurd,” Mr. Guttenberg said in his statement. He also dismissed pre-emptively any suggestion that the work was done for him.

Mr. Guttenberg belongs to the Christian Social Union party, which is the Bavarian sister party of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. The opposition Social Democratic Party has been quick to say the accusations raise credibility issues. The CDU dismissed the allegations as a smear campaign.

The University of Bayreuth, which awarded the dissertation a grade of summa cum laude in 2007, sent Mr. Guttenberg a letter Thursday offering him two weeks to respond to allegations he copied significant sections of the work, after which a university spokesman said a committee on academic standards will decide how to proceed.

The FAZ this week republished part of an article it ran in 1997, whose lead paragraphs the newspaper says are nearly identical to the introduction of Mr. Guttenberg’s thesis.

The author of the 1999 FAZ article, Barbara Zehnpfennig, a University of Passau professor, doesn’t believe that the similarity was inadvertent.

“It can be assumed that the plagiarism was intentional,” Zehnpfennig said. “It’s a violation of scientific honesty.”

FAZ has declined to comment beyond what it has already published.

Gerd Langguth, a professor of political science at the University of Bonn and author of a biography of Angela Merkel, said that the allegations, if proven, could be harmful for the CDU/CSU conservative alliance.

“Guttenberg has a great deal of charisma and is a key attraction for the party. The latest allegations affect his personal reputation,” Prof. Langguth said.

Prof. Langguth said the defense minister’s popularity also has made him almost equal to Ms. Merkel in the public view.

“On one hand, these allegations will annoy Chancellor Merkel; but on the other, Guttenberg was a strong rival,” Prof. Langguth said. “These allegations could have repercussions for the coming regional elections because Guttenberg has a very positive reputation. But they have yet to be proven.”

Conservative lawmakers, meanwhile, came to Guttenberg’s defense. Guenter Krings, the parliamentary leader for Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said that a few transgressions don’t discount the entire dissertation.

“A researcher in Bremen meticulously searched through this 470-page dissertation, and found two sections that weren’t quoted properly,” Mr. Krings told broadcaster N24. “But to take from this that the entire dissertation is plagiarized is really ridiculous.”

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